A discussion of PR and branding in sports today

Tag Archives: ESPNU

I just started interning for the second summer at a small PR firm in San Francisco, so forgive me for abandoning my blog for a week. Now that’s out of the way, lets get down to the nitty gritty that is college football. I read an article when I got home today; it was ESPN‘s report of some heartbreaking news.

Wednesday, Oregon football coach Chip Kelly released a statement announcing the indefinite suspension of cornerback Cliff Harris. All because this kid (and I’m allowed to say kid because I’m older than he is) can’t keep it under 100 mph. The 20 year old was cited Sunday morning after police clocked the player going 118 mph with a suspended license in a rental car.

There are so many things wrong with that last sentence.

Suspended License – Why did he have a suspended license? What did he do originally to get it taken away?

118 mph – Seriously? The main highway going through Eugene has a 55 mph speed limit.

Rental Car – This could be a lie, but I thought you needed to be 25 to rent a car. Never mind the fact that you need a license (this I know to be true).

The car was said to be rented to a university employee, which just opens a whole different can of worms that I don’t want to even think about.

I can’t help but think this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The same day, ESPNU posted a podcast discussing the state of college football after a rather turbulent offseason. Amongst the talk, interviewee Pat Forde suggests that some of the controversies going on in college football today have probably been going on for a long time and are just now being brought to light. Host Ivan Maisel, in response to Forde’s comment, brings up the fact that information is more readily accessible than it has been in the past due to the emergence of social media, which could explain the exploding of controversies this year.

But is this an excuse? Social media can make you, and it can certainly break you. First impressions are no longer made over the phone or face-to-face, but rather via Facebook “stalking.” I will never forget my first day of J452: Strategic Public Relations Communications when my professor started off our first class with a slideshow, one slide per student. She revealed what anyone and everyone (including future employers) could find about each of us on the web within ten minutes. Some weren’t so bad, some were pretty bad and some were worse. Yes, it’s harder the shield ourselves from the world because everything we do is online, kept forever in the intangible nothingness of the Internet. But that’s no justification. Maybe if we were older, using our first computer and just started to learn about that thing that can find all the answers (Google). But we’re not, and by “we” I mean me and all those athletes making mistakes. I got my third laptop at eighteen. I’m not sure I can remember what I did with my free time before Myspace and Facebook came along. The irony of all these social media-induced scandals is, they’re all coming from those who’ve grown up in the digital age. One would think we’d know how to use social media the way it’s meant to be used. Psych.

Chip Kelly said something in his statement that really stuck with me.

Cliff’s future clearly is in Cliff’s hands. Earning an opportunity to represent the University of Oregon and this football program certainly rests far beyond a player’s ability on the field of play. Our behavior out of the spotlight often is more important and will be held to a higher standard. Until Cliff is able to conform to the same standards all of us must comply with, his status will remain unchanged.

For some reason, these words really reinforced my faith in the Ducks. Perhaps it is the fact that this team has a leader that truly understands the meaning of a team and the environment we live in today, the digital age. These players are given more than they probably ever dreamed. They are the heroes of a small town that worships one thing: the duck. With great power comes great responsibility. But amid all the praising, winning and inflating egos, Kelly is still able to understand that today, the spotlight is never out; get used to it; adapt.

Last week (sorry for the delay) it was announced that ESPN and FOX signed a 2.7 billion dollar twelve-year contract with the PAC-12. As a duck myself, this is huge! This literally means that ESPN and FOX will pay the PAC-12 for the exclusive broadcasting rights to its games starting next school year.

In an ESPNU College Football podcast, Ivan Maisel and Beano Cook discuss the largest broadcasting deal in college sports history. Us west coasters have felt underrated for decades with the belief that media tend to give more credit to east coast college sports teams and less to west coast schools. For example, when Oregon played Tennessee in the 2010 pre-season media favored Tennessee even though Oregon was ranked much higher in all the polls. So Maisel asks the question, does this deal mean the infamous east coast bias is no longer?

Getting a contract like this brings in tons of money to each school in the PAC-12. In fact, this deal will nearly cover all University of Washington’s costs of building a new football stadium. This money will never be spent on a professor, new computers or anything to do with a college classroom. College athletics is a business, and as Cook says, the only difference between college sports and professional sports is that professional sports get paid. And lets be real, can we even be sure of that anymore?

But all this scandal and money surrounding college athletics today only means one thing for public relations professionals: job security.